Beyond Tool Hopping: Unifying Geometrical and Physical Optics on One Platform

Most optical engineers face the same frustration: ray tracing is fast but ignores diffraction. And diffraction occurs not only at the aperture pupil, but it happens at many surfaces, edges, and apertures throughout a system.

At the same time, the growing number of sophisticated components – including microstructures, diffractive and metasurfaces, crystals, fibers, waveguides, and gratings – demands physical optics modeling in a system context.

The result is a fragmented workflow: one tool for rays, another for fields, and little hope of connecting them in a meaningful way.

The real problem is not speed versus accuracy — it is a conceptual divide. Geometrical optics and physical optics are still treated as separate worlds in textbooks, in software, and in our daily work. But they do not have to be.

In this webinar, Wyrowski takes a step back and looks at the theoretical and algorithmic relationship between geometrical and physical optics from a fresh perspective. He shows how geometrical optics can be embedded in physical optics — not as a compromise, but as a natural consequence of a unifying approach.

Once this is understood, a system simulation that seamlessly combines the concepts of geometrical and physical optics in the different regions of the system where they matter follows naturally.

As often in science: from the right point of view, things become much easier. And optics can show its full beauty.